A Hypothetical Illness
by Viva Raine
Summary: Darth Sidious was positive this hadn't been listed in the "How To Rule The Galaxy For Dummies" guidebook. After all, he had to keep up his reputation of being immortal. Here he was, Sheev Palpatine, Supreme Chancellor, Sith Lord… and now… tissue hogger? It threw off the rhythm of his ongoing list of titles. But perhaps he should have foreseen it…


Hi guys! Here's a fic I wrote back last summer when I was in France, the result of me challenging myself to write a story about a character I never thought I would write. Hence this humorous take on what Palpatine would be like when sick ;) Bonus points to you if you pick up on the reference to the Yoda Chronicles lego videos. Takes place in Prequel Trilogy era. Have a great day, and enjoy!

P.S. Since I'm really loving them right now, might as well give 'em a mention - go check out the songs by For King and Country ;P

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_Palpatine's Office, Coruscant, 17:00... _

Darth Sidious was positive this hadn't been listed in the "How To Rule The Galaxy For Dummies" guidebook. After all, he had to keep up his reputation of being immortal. Here he was, Sheev Palpatine, Supreme Chancellor, Sith Lord… and now… tissue hogger? It threw off the rhythm of his ongoing list of titles. But perhaps he should have foreseen it…

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_Palpatine's Quarters, Coruscant, 04:00… _

Sheev hadn't moved an inch from the position he'd slept in last night (the same position he slept in every night), flat on his back, arms at his sides, rigid and flat as a board. He didn't snore (the _indignity_), he didn't shift, and never, under any circumstances, did he curl up under his blanket, drink hot cocoa to relax himself, or count imaginary Bothans hopping over a fence.

So, that said, he quite obviously didn't get much sleep. And the live-on-the-Dark-Side-literally routine finally caught up you, after a while. In other words (despite the fact that this wasn't the most widely advertised "Join the Dark Side - Rule the Galaxy" billboard slogan) … Sith Lords could get sick like any other human. (Unless, of course, they weren't human. In those cases, their weaknesses were usually more species-adapted.) Which was utterly unacceptable, but inevitable all the same.

And although he wasn't the smartest man in the galaxy, (for all the sand on Tatooine, this guy thought he could run an Empire on his own, and ends up getting defeated by teddy bears. Oh, wait. Nobody knows that yet…) it shouldn't have been hard to tell what was wrong when he woke up exhausted, his breathing pattern slightly altered (pray nobody alters it any further… no one knows that one either, do they…?) and his muscles vaguely achy. He assumed it was simply the result of too many bad nights' sleep and perhaps more kaf than what was reasonably good for him.

Apparently, he assumed too much. (Finally! A good joke the people can appreciate!)

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_Palpatine's Office, Coruscant, 07:00…_

Ugh. Since when was there so much paperwork to be filed in one day, not to mention before before the morning Senatorial session? The Jedi, the Senate, the Trade Federation, the Banking Clan… sometimes he wondered why he had chosen to sacrifice any of his attention for the stupid Republic in the first place. Oh, right. Because he'd rather be the master of the entire galaxy than one red-faced kid who could spin a double-bladed lightsaber and sing anything to the tune of his favorite song, but not much else. Oh, stars, life was so confusing sometimes. Especially when your whole foreseeing-the-future thing wasn't as sharp as it once was.

He sighed, and scrawled his signature on yet another contract, sniffling. Wait. No. Absolutely, positively, a hundred percent that did not happen. First of all, there was nothing wrong with him, the air was pristine, recycled, refreshed and reused every 75 seconds, and despite harboring a great dislike, he had no known reaction to paper - why would he sniffle? Second, and most importantly - Sith Lords _never _sniffled. He had _inhaled _sharply, causing some _substance_ that had somehow been... congested... in his nose… to make a distinctly… un-Sithly...noise. But that didn't necessarily mean he was... _sniffling, _per se.

Oh, well. He'd already lost that train of thought by the time he signed the next release form.

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_Senate Arena, Coruscant, 11:00..._

Stifling.

Now that was a dignified, sophisticated word worthy of the lips of a Sith Lord - Supreme Chancellor. Mostly because that was the only word he could think of to describe the way he felt right now. His fiery red robes had been tailored specifically to complement his pale skin, hide his startling slight weight, and keep him comfortable at all times. (Sith-ing out during a meeting wasn't quite an option at this point in the plan…)

Now, however, his layers upon layers of artificially-cooled-and-heated robes weren't living up to their name. And he was freezing… wait, what? He was shivering, the sweat that had dripped down his neck only seconds ago suddenly feeling like an ice bath and causing a chill to run through him as it slipped off his shoulder blade.

As one of the Senators droned on and on about the insufficiency of the the trade route taxes and the damper it placed on their planet's progress, (quite a good argument, in fact, for a matter that he'd concluded decades of meticulous planning ago) Mas Amedda leaned his head towards Palpatine, hissing, "Are you sure you feel quite well?"

With a dramatic flick of her wrist, Sly Moore brushed the back of her hand against his forehead in the most inconspicuous motion she could manage. "Yes, you do feel rather warm…"

He shivered against her ice-cold touch, sweating again. Fever. Now, that made perfect sense.

"I assure you, I am functioning perfectly well." Which was a lie, but then, so was the rest of his life. His mere _existence _was practically a lie in itself. One more couldn't hurt.

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_Palpatine's Office, Coruscant, 15:00… _

Of all things on Palpatine's list of things to do when sick (hypothetically- because he wasn't sick at all), meeting with Bail Organa to discuss the dangers of allowing him more power was down at the bottom with drink hot cocoa and call Mom. Of course, he had some amount of control on the last two, and although he was playing the entire war - the entire galaxy, for that matter - like it was a holochess game, there was no way he could cancel a meeting with Bail Organa and not look bad.

There were rumors already, doubts he could sense lurking in the edge of people's minds. Jedi, especially. He had to be the good guy in this. _Look _like the good guy at least. He couldn't think of anything remotely good he'd done since he baked a cake for his mother when he was seven - and there'd even been evil intentions behind that. The only reason he made it was so that he could eat everyone's icing.

As Bail seated himself across from Palpatine, settling into the chair like this was his office and he wasn't intimidated at all, it wasn't all that hard to read the frustration festering in the man, the hesitance to give one man sole power over the entire galaxy, the fierce protection and loyalty radiating off of him, for the Republic, for his planet, for his wife. Too bad Bail was so… righteous_… _He was a pretty smart guy.

"Welcome, Senator Organa, I trust you ha-" he broke off suddenly, a strange tickling sensation in his nose taking him by surprise. He sniffed - not sniffled - wrinkling his nose and willing the feeling to leave. "I trust you ha-ha-ha-ha...CHUUU!"

The force of the sneeze jerked his head forwards as he instinctively more than anything else threw his arm in front of his face, his eyes watering and feeling suddenly a bit lightheaded. He heard an ill-guarded mental, _No, Supreme Chancellor, I have thankfully not sneezed recently, how about you?_ coming from Bail Organa, and longingly wished everyone knew he could read minds so that he could have choked the man to death right there.

He turned to face the man, mildly surprised to find his face schooled into a perfectly patient and uninterested expression, despite the painfully obvious suppressed desire to laugh he could feel building up through the Force. He wanted to mentally tease it, make it grow, see if he was strong enough to make such a stubborn as Bail Organa laugh in his face, but a dripping sensation in his nose caught his attention instead.

No, please, no.

As discreetly as he could manage after such a violent sneeze, he sniffled… quite loudly, the fact that he could feel Bail's still mounting urge to laugh not helping anything. Apparently the infamous sniffle not achieving all he had needed it to do, he pulled a red-and-white-laced handkerchief from his pocket and swiped it once across, with as much dignity as the situation would allow, hoping desperately no one would watch the security holos before he had a chance to delete them.

That was Bail's breaking point. He let out a deep, amused chuckle, hiding his mouth behind his fist and half-raising one eyebrow. At Palpatine's questioning look, made all the more comical by his shiny red nose and flushed cheeks, he sighed slightly."I have to say, you are quite the sight when you're ill."

That was Palpatine's breaking point. "I AM NOT ILL!" he raged, slapping his desk and pointing exaggeratedly at the exit. "LEAVE! NOW! WE WILL CONTINUE THIS OPERATION LATER!" His throat was strangely raw after his outburst, leaving him wondering if maybe he really was sick...Well, that was one person off his back, anyways. Only the rest of the galaxy to go…

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_Palpatine's Quarters, Coruscant, 18:00… _

Finally, after trudging his way through meeting after meeting, contract after contract, until he'd lost his voice and he thought his hand might fall off, not to mention that his brain had fallen asleep a long time ago, Palpatine called his day at an end and retired to his quarters.

He could admit, to himself, that he was just a little tired, maybe a little under the weather, nothing a little sleep and some kaffe couldn't take care of. He shook off his boots, perhaps for the first time since becoming a senator not caring that they were in the middle of the floor, and settled into his silk slippers.

Dropping onto the bed, in nothing but his tunic and piled under several blankets, Palpatine let his head fall back on his pillow, just awake enough to notice how comforting that felt to his pounding head. Within seconds, he was blissfully asleep, with no way to know it'd be twice as bad tomorrow. Not that he necessarily cared - it felt good to slow down and relax sometimes…

...Hypothetically, of course. He'd never been sick in the first place.


End file.
